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Elena Even-Simkin, Yishai Tobin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev): Internal Vowel Alternation as a Phonological-semantic Sign System in English According to the Sign-oriented Theory of the Columbia School

Alan Huffman (The Graduate Center - CUNY): The Phonological Motivation for Verner's Law and Grimm's Law

Hidemi Riggs (Soka University of America): The Structure of Japanese Conditionals in Modern Japanese: A Grammatical Account from a Functional Linguistics Perspective

Nancy Stern (The City College - CUNY): Ourself, Themself, and More: The Communicative Function of Number in -self Pronouns

Lavi Wolf, Yishai Tobin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev): Phonological Proclivities across Languages according to the Theory of Phonology as Human Behavior

The Columbia School is a group of linguists developing the theoretical framework originally established by the late William Diver. Language is seen as a symbolic tool whose structure is shaped both by its communicative function and by the characteristics of its human users. Grammatical analyses account for the distribution of linguistic forms as an interaction between linguistic meaning and pragmatic and functional factors such as inference, ease of processing, and iconicity. Phonological analyses explain the syntagmatic and paradigmatic distribution of phonological units within signals, also drawing on both communicative function and human physiological and psychological characteristics.

The support of The Columbia School Linguistic Society is gratefully acknowledged